FUNDAMENTALSOF FORENSICANTHROPOLOGY

LINDA L. KLEPINGER

Department of Anthropology

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana, Illinois

A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION

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FUNDAMENTALSOF FORENSICANTHROPOLOGY

Foundations of Human Biology

Series Editors

Matt CartmillKaye Brown

Department of Biological Anthropology and Anatomy

Duke University Medical Center

Durham, North Carolina

The Growth of Humanity, by Barry BoginFundamentals of Forensic Anthropology, by Linda L. Klepinger

FUNDAMENTALSOF FORENSICANTHROPOLOGY

LINDA L. KLEPINGER

Department of Anthropology

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Urbana, Illinois

A JOHN WILEY & SONS, INC., PUBLICATION

Copyright # 2006 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Klepinger, Linda L.

Fundamentals of Forensic Anthropology

ISBN 13: 978-0471-21006-1

ISBN 10: 0-471-21006-4

Printed in the United States of America

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CONTENTS

PHOTO CREDITS ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi

SERIES INTRODUCTION xiii

PART I BACKGROUND SETTING FOR FORENSICANTHROPOLOGY

1 Introduction 3

Overview of the Field, 3

Education and Training, 5

Overview of the Book, 6

2 The Role of Forensic Anthropology inHistorical Context 8

The Somewhat Difficult Birth of a Specialty, 8

The Middle Years, 11

Approaching Senescence?, 15

v

PART II TOWARDS PERSONAL IDENTIFICATION

3 Initial Assessments of Skeletal Remains 19

Human or Not?, 20

Number of Individuals Represented, 22

4 Assignment of Sex 25

Criteria for Sex Attribution in the Adult Skeleton, 25

Pelvic Traits, 26

The Skull, 28

Visual Assessment, 30

Discriminant Function Analysis, 31

The Appendicular Bones, 33

Femur, 33

Humerus, 34

Other Appendicular Elements, 35

Miscellaneous Axial Bones, 36

Attribution of Sex from the Skeletons of Children, 37

Figuring the Error Rate, 39

5 Age Estimation 42

The Early Years, 43

Dental Age, 44

Bone Age, 46

Long Bone Length, 46

Union of Primary Ossification Centers, 48

Epiphyseal Fusion, 49

The Adult Years, 53

Macroscopic Methods, 53

Face of the Pubic Symphysis, 53

Sternal Extremity of the Rib, 55

The Auricular Surface, 56

Cranial Suture Closure, 57

Dental Methods, 58

Microscopic Methods, 60

Other Age Indicators, 62

Concluding Remarks on Adult Age Estimation, 63

vi CONTENTS

6 Deciphering Ancestral Background 64

The Biological and the Cultural, 64

The Biological Context, 65

The Cultural Component, 65

Skeletal Indicators, 66

The Skull, 66

The Postcranium, 75

7 Stature Estimation 77

How Tall Are You, Really?, 77

Estimation of Living Stature from Skeletal Remains, 78

The Fully Method, 79

Stature Estimation From Long Bone Length, 80

Comparison of Methods, 82

Reporting Stature Estimates, 83

Correcting Stature Estimates for Older Adults, 84

Secular Trend, 86

Stature Estimates from Fragmentary Long Bones, 86

Stature Estimation from Short Bone Length, 87

Footwear and Foot Length, 87

8 Skeletal Markers of Activity and Life History 89

Childbirth Indicators, 90

Handedness, 91

Other Activity Markers, 92

Partial Medical History, 94

Medical Radiology, 96

PART III PRINCIPAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL ROLES INMEDICAL–LEGAL INVESTIGATION

9 Trauma 101

Blunt Force Trauma, 102

Cranial Fracture, 102

Hyoid Fracture, 105

Postcranial Fracture, 106

Child Abuse, 106

CONTENTS vii

Penetrating and Perforating Trauma, 109

Gunshot Wounds, 109

Sharp Injuries, 114

10 The Postmortem Period 117

Estimation of the Postmortem Interval, 117

Postmortem Events, 122

Carnivore Scavenging, 123

Cremation, 124

Has the Body Been Burned?, 125

Fracturing, 126

Bone Shrinkage, 129

Dismemberment, 129

Ritual Use of Skeletal Material, 130

11 Professionalism, Ethics, and the Expert Witness 132

The Expert Witness, 133

Standards and Credentials for Expert Testimony, 134

Some Practical Issues, 136

Ethics, 137

Science in the Courtroom: Two Unfortunate Examples, 139

When Good Science is not Presented, 139

When Good Science is Ignored, 143

12 Genetics and DNA 145

Serology and Mendelian Genetics, 146

Forensic DNA Analysis, 147

Legal Considerations, 150

References 152

Index 175

viii CONTENTS

PHOTO CREDITS

The photo figures listed below are courtesy of the following offices and

individuals.

Figure 3.1 Bruce Ramseyer

Figures 4.2 and 4.3 Bruce Ramseyer

Figures 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.7 and 6.8 Bruce Ramseyer

Figures 8.1 and 8.2 Kris Bolt

Figure 9.1 Kris Bolt

Figure 9.4 Peoria County Coroner’s Office

Figure 9.6 Joe Siefferman

Figure 9.7 Kris Bolt

Figure 10.1 John Heidingsfelder

Figure 10.2 Bruce Ramseyer

Figure 10.3 R. Barry Lewis

Figure 10.4 Bruce Ramseyer

Figure 10.6a John Moore

Figure 10.6b Eldon Quick

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The great American tennis champion Althea Gibson (1927–2003) remarked

that “No matter what accomplishments you make, somebody helps you.”

Somebodies, actually.

First and foremost is my colleague Eugene Giles who has, at numerous

and various times, acted as sounding board, source man, and diplomatic

critic—all with his usual aplomb and attention to detail. Matt Cartmill and

Kaye Brown, series editors, were a source of advice and encouragement.

Steve Holland’s experience in graphics production and publishing was

very helpful in getting figures modified and into the proper format.

Several members of the medical–legal community and law enforcement

professionals have served as examples of the highest integrity and work

ethics in death investigation and tempered my too frequent tendency to

cynicism. They are proof that we can and do make a difference. You

know who you are. Many thanks.

xi

SERIES INTRODUCTION

The core focus of physical anthropology as a discipline is the biology of

human beings in a cultural context. The subfield of forensic anthropology

adapts this focus to the special job of identifying unknown remains and

seeking and interpreting any evidence relating to the death that the

remains may hold. We believe that Linda Klepinger’s book will become

the classic text in this subfield. Fundamentals of Forensic Anthropology

embodies a genuine scientific passion for the subject matter, communicated

not only through the author’s unique critical and evaluative approach to

the tools and techniques used in forensic investigations but also through

her craft and artistry as a writer.

Forensic anthropologists need to know a great deal about human

osteology, skeletal biology, dental anthropology, taphonomy, archeology,

genomics, and scientific inquiry in general. Fortunately for us, Klepinger

knows all this and more. Best of all, she has the rare gift of being able to

take others along with her for an eye-popping ride without demanding

that they be similarly knowledgeable. In a prose style both engaging and

straightforward, she unveils the history, limitations, accuracies, impreci-

sions, and future of forensic anthropology. Her book will lead its readers

to ask all manner of related questions regarding the science behind forensic

techniques, because it will teach them not how to do forensic science but how

to think about doing it. This, we believe, is the essence of a classic text.

In this book, professional forensic anthropologists will find guides to help

them in estimating from unknown remains an individual’s probable age, sex,

race and stature. Novices will learn to understand—and question—the

xiii

science behind such estimates. And everybody who reads this book will

discover how much they care about this field, and how important it is

that it be done with both authority and honesty. This reflects the field’s

social significance as well as its intrinsic scientific interest; but most of all,

it reflects Klepinger’s consummate skill in telling the story of her discipline.

Forensics should be an objective scientific inquiry, not a body of opinion

in service to a particular employer. Throughout her career, Linda Klepinger

has pursued this ideal with wit, charm, and a tenacious and courageous

devotion to the scientific method. Her impatience with less conscientious

practitioners is expressed in her comment that the false certainty they

profess to offer is perhaps “. . . best left to those who wear a pointy hatwith stars on it.” After reading Fundamentals of Forensic Anthropology,

you will understand why the author quotes Voltaire’s aphorism: “Doubt is

not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one.”

In editing Foundations of Human Biology, we seek to offer students the

works of physical anthropology’s leading practitioners and its best authors.

We are grateful to Linda Klepinger for contributing a work that captures

the enthusiasm of crime-scene investigations and channels that enthusiasm

into a critical concern for the scientific basis of the investigators’ knowledge.

Her integration of empirical inquiry, social insight, scientific integrity,

and narrative skill exemplifies and carries forward the best traditions of

anthropological science.

Kaye Brown

Matt Cartmill

Durham, North Carolina

March 27, 2006

xiv SERIES INTRODUCTION

PART I

BACKGROUND SETTING FORFORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY

1INTRODUCTION

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name

applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound

together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

—Louis Pasteur

OVERVIEW OF THE FIELD

Pasteur’s observation on science appears particularly appropriate to forensic

anthropology. The American Board of Forensic Anthropology offers the

following definition:

Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropol-

ogy to the legal process. The identification of skeletal, badly decomposed, or

otherwise unidentified human remains is important for both legal and huma-

nitarian reasons. Forensic anthropologists apply standard scientific techniques

developed in physical anthropology to identify human remains, and to assist in

the detection of crime. Forensic anthropologists frequently work in conjunc-

tion with forensic pathologists, odontologists, and homicide investigators to

identify a decedent, discover evidence of foul play, and/or the postmorteminterval. In addition to assisting in locating and recovering suspicious

remains, forensic anthropologists work to suggest the age, sex, ancestry,

stature, and unique features of a decedent from the skeleton.

Fundamentals of Forensic Anthropology, by Linda L. KlepingerCopyright # 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

3

The roots of forensic anthropology are firmly planted in the twentieth-

century academic research of physical (i.e. biological) anthropology,

especially bioarchaeology. The quest for extracting the maximum infor-

mation from skeletal remains of past peoples pushed the envelope of osteol-

ogy beyond the parameters of study routinely addressed by physicians and

anatomists. The knowledge, skills and experience that physical anthropolo-

gists focused on to derive biological, and even cultural, information from

human skeletons in an archaeological context has proven directly applicable

to medical–legal contexts. This is not to state that the research to application

flow has been essentially one-way, for that is, indeed, not the case. The

growth of research and practice in the forensic realm has created a back-

flow of information to bioarchaeological and paleontological endeavors.

Reading the bones for clues to personal identification summed up most of

the initial work by anthropologists, who were called upon pretty much on a

sporadic, ad hoc basis. Increasingly they are called upon to help interpret skel-

etal evidencewith an eye to cause andmanner of death. “Simply put, the cause

of death is any injury or disease that produces a physiological derangement in

the body that results in the individual dying” (DiMaio and DiMaio, 1993,

p. 3). Therefore, causes of death can be as diverse as gunshot wound, mela-

noma, or toxic shock. While determinations of causes of death are ultimately

the call of pathologists, medical examiners, and coroners, when remains are

skeletal, the opinion of the forensic anthropologist counts. However, anthro-

pologists lacking soft tissue evidence must be especially cautious in their pro-

nouncements. For instance, there is no absolute association between linear

skull fractures and degree of brain injury, and the cause of death may or

may not have any direct connection with a cranial fracture. The manner of

death is the circumstance that gave rise to the cause of death. In contrast to

the myriad possible causes of death, the manner of death has but five cat-

egories: natural causes, accident, homicide, suicide, and undetermined. For

example, a gunshot wound to the head as a cause of death could result from

accidental, homicidal, suicidal, or undetermined circumstances. The circum-

stances of death are part of the medical–legal investigation that is often amen-

able to anthropological probing—from assigning manner of death to

evaluating the believability of a suspect’s account of events.

Themechanism of death is the physiological or chemical process, initiated

by the cause of death, that leads to the failure of vital organs or organ

systems. It is a description of how that bullet to the head or chest eventuated

in death. This is not an area of primary concern to the anthropologist and

should usually be left to medical personnel.

What is of concern to the anthropologist is maintaining the chain of evi-

dence or chain of custody. The anthropologist must vouch for the security of

any remains or other evidence left in his or her custody. The anthropologist

4 INTRODUCTION

must guarantee that the evidence was not tampered with in any undocu-

mented way. Often, but not always, there is a chain of custody form

signed and dated in serial fashion by each custodian. In any event, anthropol-

ogists should record dates, times, and circumstances of the arrival and

departure of evidence and where it was housed in the interim.

Mass disasters and recovery from mass graves present special challenges

and obstacles that differ from more typical death investigations in that

agencies and command structures, foreign settings, and bureaucracies must

be dealt with. Each such instance has its own idiosyncrasies.

Finally, forensic anthropology is very much analogous to clinical practice,

especially in regard to decision-making, as described by Dawes et al. (1989).

We employ both “clinical” judgment, where the practitioner processes infor-

mation in his or her head, and actuarial judgment, where interpretation is the

product of an automatic routine or calculation based on empirically estab-

lished formulations. The Dawes and co-workers study concluded that in

medicine and psychology the actuarially based decisions were superior to

the clinically based ones. Their conclusion is of interest to anthropology,

but (and this is a very big but) the databases on which their actuarial pro-

cedures were based are very much larger than those characteristic of anthro-

pology, and their formulations have been more intensively cross-validated.

Discretionary decisions in forensic anthropology retain value and must

even be applied to the formulae themselves. The era of autopilot has not

yet arrived. Attention must be paid.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

In the United States and Canada most, but not all, programs in physical

anthropology are housed in departments of anthropology. Broad undergradu-

ate training in the four fields of anthropology automatically introduces the

student to a broad range of cultural practices and to principles of archaeol-

ogy. Students should have courses in both field archaeology and in archae-

ological method and theory. Admission to the Physical Anthropology

section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences requires a masters

degree in anthropology, which should reflect an emphasis on physical

anthropology, and even more specifically on human osteology/skeletalbiology. In practice very few university degrees specify such detail. A

Ph.D. in physical anthropology with the same emphasis on some aspect of

human osteology is one of the requirements for becoming eligible to sit

for the American Board of Forensic Anthropology certifying examination.

Galloway and Simmons (1997) present an in-depth look at education in

forensic anthropology under changing circumstances.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING 5